Poems That Make Grown Men Cry Read online

  Hokku

  Dragonfly catcher,

  Where today

  have you gone?

  (c. 1740–1775)

  The Russian philologist, critic, essayist, and translator Boris Akunin (b. Grigory Shalvovich Chkhartishvili, 1956) began publishing detective stories in 1998 and has become one of the most widely read authors in Russia. His Erast Fandorin series of books, full of literary games and allusions, are translated into English by Andrew Bromfield. This translation of Chiyo’s hokku (later known as a ‘haiku’) is his own.

  Wandrers Nachtlied II

  JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE (1749–1832)

  JOHN LE CARRÉ

  I chose this poem in part because it is a gem of German lyrical poetry; and in part because the beauty of the German language has long been lost on British ears, and it’s high time for a revival. And finally because the ‘Nachtlied’ is a moving and exquisite contemplation of old age.

  Wandrers Nachtlied II

  Wayfarer’s Night Song II

  Über allen Gipfeln

  Over all the hilltops

  Ist Ruh,

  is calm.

  In allen Wipfeln

  In all the treetops

  Spürest du

  you feel

  Kaum einen Hauch;

  hardly a breath of air.

  Die Vögelein schweigen

  The little birds fall silent

  in Walde.

  in the woods.

  Warte nur, balde

  Just wait . . . soon

  Ruhest du auch.

  you’ll also be at rest.

  (1776)

  TRANSLATION BY HYDE FLIPPO

  Often billed a spy turned writer, John le Carré (b. David Cornwell, 1931) prefers to describe himself as ‘a writer who, when very young, spent a few ineffectual but extremely formative years in British Intelligence’. His many books include the ‘Smiley’ novels, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963), The Naïve and Sentimental Lover (1971), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1974), and, most recently, A Delicate Truth (2013).

  Frost at Midnight

  SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE (1772–1834)

  SEBASTIAN FAULKS

  Coleridge was a shambolic man who was too often distracted by drugs and worldly matters to write the poetry his talent warranted. Yet for a moment here everything is held in perfect poise. Alone, late at night, a man and his sleeping child . . . The warmth of the flickering fire keeps at bay the freezing night, and in the silence Coleridge travels back into his life. He touches on a Wordsworthian sense of the spirit that impels and runs through all natural things. Then, with a surge of paternal love, he projects himself into his son’s future: the regrets and constraints of his own life shall underwrite the joy and liberation of his child’s.

  The clinching first word of the last stanza, ‘Therefore’, resonates like the church bell of Ottery St Mary, where Coleridge was reared. The language achieves a Shakespearean beauty and command, with the impudent repetition of ‘quiet’ in the final line.

  The force of a father’s love has enabled the poet to find his true and immortal voice. It is desperately poignant, both in its eloquence and in the fact that such moments were so few for Coleridge.

  I read this poem at my daughter’s christening.

  Frost at Midnight

  The Frost performs its secret ministry,

  Unhelped by any wind. The owlet’s cry

  Came loud – and hark, again! loud as before.

  The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,

  Have left me to that solitude, which suits

  Abstruser musings: save that at my side

  My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.

  ’Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs

  And vexes meditation with its strange

  And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,

  This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood,

  With all the numberless goings-on of life,

  Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame

  Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not;

  Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,

  Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.

  Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature

  Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,

  Making it a companionable form,

  Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit

  By its own moods interprets, every where

  Echo or mirror seeking of itself,

  And makes a toy of Thought.

  But O! how oft,

  How oft, at school, with most believing mind,

  Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,

  To watch that fluttering stranger! and as oft

  With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt

  Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower,

  Whose bells, the poor man’s only music, rang

  From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day,

  So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me

  With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear

  Most like articulate sounds of things to come!

  So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,

  Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!

  And so I brooded all the following morn,

  Awed by the stern preceptor’s face, mine eye

  Fixed with mock study on my swimming book:

  Save if the door half opened, and I snatched

  A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up,

  For still I hoped to see the stranger’s face,

  Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved,

  My play-mate when we both were clothed alike!

  Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,

  Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,

  Fill up the intersperséd vacancies

  And momentary pauses of the thought!

  My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart

  With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,

  And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,

  And in far other scenes! For I was reared

  In the great city, pent ’mid cloisters dim,

  And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.

  But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze

  By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags

  Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,

  Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores

  And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear

  The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible

  Of that eternal language, which thy God

  Utters, who from eternity doth teach

  Himself in all, and all things in himself.

  Great universal Teacher! he shall mould

  Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.

  Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,

  Whether the summer clothe the general earth

  With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing

  Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch

  Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch

  Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall

  Heard only in the trances of the blast,

  Or if the secret ministry of frost

  Shall hang them up in silent icicles,

  Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.

  (1798)

  The novelist Sebastian Faulks (b. 1953) made his name with his historical French trilogy, The Girl at the Lion d’Or (1989), Birdsong (1993), and Charlotte Gray (1998). His dozen other novels include A Fool’s Alphabet (1992), Human Traces (2005), Engleby (2007) and A Week in December (2009). He has also published authorised sequels to Ian Fleming’s James Bond cycle in Devil May Care (2008) and P. G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster series in Jeeves and the Wedding Bells (2013).

  Character of the Happy Warrior

  WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1770–1850)
r />   HAROLD EVANS

  In 1988, the family of Sir Denis Hamilton (1918–1988) asked if I’d speak these verses at his memorial service. When I read them again, I knew that I’d be in trouble holding back tears. Hamilton was an idealist whose ideals, in the end, were betrayed. Stanza after stanza, I was moved by lines so very appropriate to his life as the soldier I never knew and the journalist who was my mentor for some twenty years.

  At twenty-two he was a junior officer shoulder-deep in the waves at Dunkirk, trying to save the one hundred sixty survivors of the thousand-strong battalion of his beloved Durham Light Infantry that he’d taken into battle. In his forties, he was the editorial genius of the [London] Sunday Times. ‘What knowledge can perform’ he was diligent to learn, determined to apply an unashamed curiosity not simply to events but also to the elevation of public standards, taste and enlightenment. He remained the King’s Scout he’d been as a boy in Middlesbrough. The commonest question he had for me, as the editor who succeeded him, was ‘Have you done your good deed for the day, Harold?’ He meant it. His moral being was his prime concern.

  Character of the Happy Warrior

  Who is the happy Warrior? Who is he

  That every man in arms should wish to be?

  – It is the generous Spirit, who, when brought

  Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought

  Upon the plan that pleased his childish thought:

  Whose high endeavours are an inward light

  That makes the path before him always bright;

  Who, with a natural instinct to discern

  What knowledge can perform, is diligent to learn;

  Abides by this resolve, and stops not there,

  But makes his moral being his prime care;

  Who, doomed to go in company with Pain,

  And Fear, and Bloodshed, miserable train!

  Turns his necessity to glorious gain;

  In face of these doth exercise a power

  Which is our human nature’s highest dower:

  Controls them and subdues, transmutes, bereaves

  Of their bad influence, and their good receives:

  By objects, which might force the soul to abate

  Her feeling, rendered more compassionate;

  Is placable – because occasions rise

  So often that demand such sacrifice;

  More skilful in self-knowledge, even more pure,

  As tempted more; more able to endure,

  As more exposed to suffering and distress;

  Thence, also, more alive to tenderness.

  – ’Tis he whose law is reason; who depends

  Upon that law as on the best of friends;

  Whence, in a state where men are tempted still

  To evil for a guard against worse ill,

  And what in quality or act is best

  Doth seldom on a right foundation rest,

  He labours good on good to fix, and owes

  To virtue every triumph that he knows:

  – Who, if he rise to station of command,

  Rises by open means; and there will stand

  On honourable terms, or else retire,

  And in himself possess his own desire;

  Who comprehends his trust, and to the same

  Keeps faithful with a singleness of aim;

  And therefore does not stoop, nor lie in wait

  For wealth, or honours, or for worldly state;

  Whom they must follow; on whose head must fall,

  Like showers of manna, if they come at all:

  Whose powers shed round him in the common strife,

  Or mild concerns of ordinary life,

  A constant influence, a peculiar grace;

  But who, if he be called upon to face

  Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined

  Great issues, good or bad for human kind,

  Is happy as a Lover; and attired

  With sudden brightness, like a Man inspired;

  And, through the heat of conflict, keeps the law

  In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw;

  Or if an unexpected call succeed,

  Come when it will, is equal to the need:

  – He who, though thus endued as with a sense

  And faculty for storm and turbulence,

  Is yet a Soul whose master-bias leans

  To homefelt pleasures and to gentle scenes;

  Sweet images! which, wheresoe’er he be,

  Are at his heart; and such fidelity

  It is his darling passion to approve;

  More brave for this, that he hath much to love: –

  ’Tis, finally, the Man, who, lifted high,

  Conspicuous object in a Nation’s eye,

  Or left unthought-of in obscurity, –

  Who, with a toward or untoward lot,

  Prosperous or adverse, to his wish or not –

  Plays, in the many games of life, that one

  Where what he most doth value must be won:

  Whom neither shape or danger can dismay,

  Nor thought of tender happiness betray;

  Who, not content that former worth stand fast,

  Looks forward, persevering to the last,

  From well to better, daily self-surpast:

  Who, whether praise of him must walk the earth

  For ever, and to noble deeds give birth,

  Or he must fall, to sleep without his fame,

  And leave a dead unprofitable name –

  Finds comfort in himself and in his cause;

  And, while the mortal mist is gathering, draws

  His breath in confidence of Heaven’s applause:

  This is the happy Warrior; this is he

  That every man in arms should wish to be.

  (1806)

  Sir Harold Evans (b. 1928) is regarded as Britain’s foremost postwar newspaper editor, above all for his stewardship of The Sunday Times from 1967 to 1981. Since moving to New York in 1984 he has been the founding editor of Condé Nast Traveler, president and publisher of the Random House group, and held several executive roles in journalism, currently editor-at-large for Reuters. He has also published books ranging from autobiography and journalism manuals to American history, notably The American Century (1998).

  Surprised by Joy

  WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1770–1850)

  HOWARD JACOBSON

  This is not a poem of hot grief. Yes, it begins with cruel immediacy, the poet turning to share spontaneous joy with someone no longer there to share joy with, but he does not evoke his ‘heart’s best treasure’ with agonising vividness, nor does his voice falter with sorrow commensurate to the loss. If anything, the voice is strong and collected, and it’s in that collectedness that the anguish lies, the scrupulousness of the remorse, the almost pedantic examination of how much memory owes to love, and how exacting the computation must always be. ‘How could I forget thee . . . through what power even for the least division of an hour.’ By a more forgiving, less vigilant account he hasn’t forgotten her at all. Did he not, in a moment of faithful love, turn to share his joy with her? But it’s not enough to remember her as though she’s there; loyalty demands he must never forget, not for that smallest division of time, the fact that she isn’t and never again will be. This is the terrifying, unconsoling paradox of remembrance, and it breaks the heart.

  Surprised by Joy

  Surprised by joy – impatient as the Wind

  I turned to share the transport – Oh! with whom

  But Thee, deep buried in the silent tomb,

  That spot which no vicissitude can find?

  Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind –

  But how could I forget thee? – Through what power,

  Even for the least division of an hour,

  Have I been so beguiled as to be blind

  To my most grievous loss? – That thought’s return

  Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore,

  Save one, one onl
y, when I stood forlorn,

  Knowing my heart’s best treasure was no more;

  That neither present time, nor years unborn

  Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.

  (1815)

  Howard Jacobson (b. 1942) won the Man Booker Prize in 2010 for The Finkler Question, the eleventh of his twelve novels. His latest, Zoo Time (2012), is an apocalyptic comedy about the end of reading. He has also published five works of nonfiction, most recently Whatever It Is, I Don’t Like It (2011), a collection of his columns for the (London) Independent.

  Last Sonnet

  JOHN KEATS (1795–1821)

  KENNETH LONERGAN

  Like the other two or three poems I can actually recite by heart, ‘Last Sonnet’ (or ‘Bright Star,’ as many know it today) was read to me by my friend, the painter Patricia Broderick.

  Keats knew he was dying when he wrote ‘Bright Star’, aged twenty-three, onboard a ship he was taking to Italy in the hope that the warmer climate would save his life – which of course it could not. The trip and his illness marked the end of his romance with Fanny Brawne.

  Even as Keats stands in awe at the star’s majesty and mystery – ‘in lone splendour hung aloft the night’ – and even as he imagines what it would be like to be a star, looking down on the beautiful Earth he is leaving, even then that’s not what he wishes for. No, he wants the star’s perpetual span of life, so that he can be ‘Pillow’d on my fair love’s ripening breast / To feel forever its soft fall and swell / Awake for ever in a sweet unrest . . .’

  Long before my friend Patsy herself died, the content and context of this poem invariably reduced me to a useless puddle of tears. And it still does, not because it reminds me of her, but because of the miracle that enables another human being to carry me back in time and over the ocean with nothing more than a sequence of words, onto the deck of a ship where I am really and truly looking at the stars with someone else’s eyes, intimately connected with his thoughts, understanding in my heart something of his feelings.